Anna Komnene, Empress of the East
I’m in the process of reading Book One of the Lady Charlotte Guest’s collection and translation of the Mabinogion, the Welsh cultural epic, and I’ve just finished the story of Peredur of the Long Lance. (Quiet, you in the back row…)
In the course of his adventures Peredur meets (and ultimately marries) a beautiful woman known as “the Empress of Cristinobyl the Great”, who lives in “India”. This Empress is fabulously beautiful, fabulously wealthy, a sorceress, and she needs a good fighting man at her beck and call.
Now, I know that to medieval storytellers pretty much everything east of Rome was considered “India” or “Asia”, so it occurs to me that “Cristinobyl the Great” might actually be Constantinople, the city of Constantine the Great, which makes the lady one of the Byzantine Empresses. If we imagine — and it’s not impossible — that this aspect of the story of Peredur dates back to about 1100 A.D., the Empress in question would probably be Anna Komnene, who was known for being a scholar, philosopher and physician as well as a superb political strategist, attempting to rule the Empire in her own name and actually going to war with her brother to gain control.
I could be wrong — I do have a tendency to drag either the Byzantine Empire or Bugs Bunny into just about everything, and Bugs just doesn’t fit this one — but if I’m right, how interesting that the legends of a female scholar and ruler from halfway around the world might have found their way into the story of one of King Arthur’s knights. Everything is part of everything else.
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